Enoch Powell: Voldemort

The news from England is unexpected, but its cause was predicted decades ago. First, lets look at the newsmaker, then we’ll examine his little-noticed prophet. There is a lesson to be learned here…

British Prime Minister David Cameron recently stunned the politically-correct wing of punditry by stating plainly what could not be more obvious: England’s multi-cultural experiment is an abysmal failure. This comes on the heels of a similar pronouncement from German Chancellor Angela Merkel in October. (Did they flip a coin to see who would go first?)

Cameron’s comments, while courageous, pale in comparison to Enoch Powell’s though, for one really important reason: Powell’s speech was over 40 years ago.

Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech was a brave appraisal of England’s future if its policy of allowing immigration without assimilation continued. Cameron’s words are a cautious reaction to what has become obvious: Immigrants live as foreigners on English Soil.

Who was Enoch Powell? He was scholar first, and patriot second. A full professor of Ancient Greek studies by the age of 25, his exceptional awards for profiency in Latin and Greek at Cambridge were almost without equal.

He studied Urdu to increase his chances of someday being appointed Viceroy of India, but cut short his professional goals and joined the military when it became clear to him that England would soon be at war with Germany. A line taken from a letter to his parent’s illustrates his regard for uber-appeaser Neville Chamberlain fairly succinctly:”The depths of infamy to which our accurst “love of peace” can lower us are unfathomable.”

So now we know Enoch Powell’s pedigree, let’s fast-forward to 1968-

Powell knew his speech on immigration would be incendiary, and he tried as best as he could to temper his courageous words by first talking about the difficult task a statesman has in warning of unseen dangers.

It helped little if at all. He knew that the press would excoriate him (and they did), but he was probably hoping that he could talk over them and speak directly to the people. He was wrong.

An excerpt from his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech:

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now.”

You might get the notion from the above quote that Powell was not a fan of America. You would be right. At one point he even thought that America would ultimately be a bigger enemy than even Germany herself. Well, I think we can safely assume that he was wrong on that count.

Powell was purely an anglophile, his ideology didn’t stray into the issue of race. He didn’t care much where you were from, or what you looked like, but he forcefully defended the British way of life and its respect for rule of law and custom. English culture was an exceptional pearl of great value in his mind, and immigration without assimilation would eventually lead to its destruction.

Today we have conservative politicians who extol the virtues of American Exceptionalism, and like Powell’s British plea for conserving that ideal, they are trying mightily to speak over the heads of media punditry. They have advantages that Powell did not: European examples of immigration experiments that have failed, and the benefit of technology which allows them to speak unfiltered directly to their constiuency.

40 years ago the British tabloids were able to turn Enoch Powell into J.K. Rowling’s personification of evil, Lord Voldemort, and but for alternative media they would no doubt be doing the same thing to Cameron and Merkel today.

The real Voldemort is not any man or woman, it’s the persistent effort by the liberal media to paint courageous statesmen as racists, bigots, and fearmongerers. The real Voldemort is the word unspoken and the statesman unheeded. The only group willing to defend politicians who are attacked by the mainstream media today? The Tea Party.

Howdy, my name is Jim Funkhouser and I write almost as well as Sarah Palin (verified at 7th grade level). I live in the kid-friendly town of Elberfeld. This lovely hamlet is located in God's Country (Indiana), US of A. My other blog, which you are cordially invited to attend, can be located easily by googling 'the' 'zonks' 'facebook'. There I do my best to reveal the best of 60's and 70's pop, rock, blues, and even country from time to time. Married for 29 years to lovely Rosanna Marie, with ten fantastic kids (Jimmy, Matthew, Aaron, Emily, Daniel (soon to be King), Niklaus, Madeline, Christopher, Wyatt, and the one and only Lucianne Marie. (Obviously all money collected in the tip jar will find its way into various nintendo and playstation software and hardware.) Please check out my book at Barnes and Noble or Amazon: We Were the Zonks! Email me at thezonks@gmail.com.

2 COMMENTS

He wasn't a little arse-licker to America like Tony Blair or Daniel Hannan are. If you guys did your homework on him you would find that he loathed America, resented that Britain had become a 'satellite' of America, was against nuclear weapons and (this will probably make the vast majority of your readers really dislike him) he was an active supporter of gay rights. And for what it's worth, his speech was taken greatly out of context. If he was around today, many of your readers would dismiss him as a pansy liberal.

Federal deportation officers staged a massive enforcement action against businesses in Los Angeles this week, arresting 212 people and serving audit notices to 122 businesses that must prove they aren’t hiring illegals, according to a report on Friday in The Washington Times.